AROUND THE WORLD

UN official: Refugee camps will improve

April 27, 2007

Kilo 26, Sudan — The head of the UN refugee agency said Thursday that he is appalled by the living conditions endured for decades by refugees at camps in eastern Sudan and promised to remedy the situation over the next 12 months.

Antonio Guterres was on a one-day visit to Sudan's border with Eritrea and Ethiopia, where UN officials care for most of the 133,000 refugees sheltering from wars in those nations.

Guterres previously inspected refugee camps in Sudan's western Darfur region, where more than 2.5 million people have been chased from their homes by four years of fighting between ethnic African rebels and the Arab-dominated central government.

Most refugees in eastern Sudan are from Eritrea and Ethiopia, where bitter fighting chased hundreds of thousands from their homes in the 1970s and 1980s.